The inflation rate in Venezuela has exploded over the last year as the socialist nation grapples with extreme levels of poverty and food shortages — even worse, a new report suggests that the inflation rate could increase ten-fold in the coming months.

According to The Week, five million Venezuelan Bolivars is equivalent to $1.45 in United States dollars, which is approximately the same amount that a minimum-wage worker earns in an entire month in Venezuela.

A cup of coffee in Venezuela now costs approximately one million Bolivars. Bloomberg reports:

Consider that just two years ago, when we launched the Bloomberg Cafe Con Leche Index, a coffee cost 450 Bolivars ...

...With the latest price increase -- from 800,000 Bolivars just a week earlier -- inflation over the past 12 months in Venezuela climbed to 43,378 percent, according to the index.

Bloomberg notes that if the inflation rate over the last three months is used to project the inflation rate over the next year, it comes out to a staggering 482,153%.

The crisis in Venezuela is so dire that Venezuelans reported losing nearly 25 lbs on average in 2017 because they couldn't afford to purchase food. The New York Post reported in February that the poverty rate in Venezuela is approximately 90%.

The following comes from a Bloomberg email called Balance of Power that I receive M-F in the AM:

Code-named Operation Constitution, the goal was straightforward and seismic — to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and put him on trial.

The failed coup attempt — involving dozens of officers from across all four branches of his military — was timed to thwart Maduro's re-election on May 20 in a poll that was widely condemned as fraudulent.

Some 30 officers were arrested, some of them accused of treason, after the plot was discovered, Bloomberg exclusively reports, with a military tribunal document alleging the U.S. and Colombia of providing financial backing for the attempted overthrow. Those interrogated by the tribunal deny this but say some U.S. and Colombian officials were aware of what was happening.

Maduro maintains his grip on power. He’s worked hard to keep top military brass in his corner with lucrative jobs and contracts. The military has even come to oversee the desperate water trade amid empty reservoirs, broken pipes and a lack of personnel.

Once one of Latin America's richest countries, Venezuela’s descent into dysfunction and poverty shows no signs of reversing course.

It was an exclusive Bloomberg investigative report. They are the only ones with a line on it. Since it was investigative journalism and the governments involved are not commenting it may as well be smoke and mirrors. Also it appears that all their sources were in Venezuela so that kind of lowers my expectations of accuracy.

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

A Venezuelan Prepper Looks Back: “Things I Would Have Done Differently If I Knew What Was Coming”

Having overcome a few personal incidents that rocked the boat these last few weeks, I want to write now about one of the most important experiences regarding the psychological aspect of prepping. Looking back as a Venezuelan prepper, there are things I would have done differently if I had fully known what was coming our way.

Enduring what we have gone through, even after having a proper approach to prepping, sort of conventional in a sense: gensets, water tanks, storage capacity, dry supplies for a few months, and other stuff, all of these are into the field of the conventional and regular prepping.

Off-road vehicles perhaps, or at least a vehicle in good enough shape to take a beating up to the retreat, radios, some food production and particular, merchandisable skills. (I lack a little bit in the field of manual arts, like pottery or painting, but maybe it is just me…I can change a tire in record time, which is an art by itself especially in a Venezuela where the roads are plagued with thugs.)

This is stuff that any person concerned about self-reliance should have covered. But next, we have to try to imagine what could be on the horizon that we have never considered.

I am not talking about prepping for every conceivable threat. That is just not possible nor practical.

What I want, is that you imagine what your action course would be just in case your worst scenario, one so bad you could not even imagine, takes place.

For those who have not read my former articles, I used to have a regular life, pretty good according to our standards in Venezuela. A good and well-paying job, medical care insurance, school at 10 minutes on foot for the kiddo. A sushi restaurant next to a pizza delivery at 5 minutes on foot, and so on. What else could you ask for?

It was all great until the apocalypse started.

How to identify this threshold is not easy for me nowadays. The more I research, the more I realize this was a planned action and conceptualized a long time ago. My generation did not have a chance to prevent it. The plan was already rolling and we were teenagers, unable to hold a gun.

The consequences would be foreseeable, for sure, for those who have lived through it already and had access to some information. Some people meeting up, perhaps some leftist candidate winning an election and slowly washing the face to the communists…the real bad guys, I mean.

But definitely, the most alarming warning sign was the food rationing: this was the cherry of the pie.

They took over the country, people included. In a country where the food production was once at industry level now is importing packaged food, box by box, for the leftist elite. If there is something left then it goes to the inferior members. Real vulnerable people got nothing, and that is why they are dying.

They started with the education system.

Trying to sell to the populace sociopaths like Stalin and Lenin as heroes of their country. Making attempts to the Marxist ideology look like the Holy Grail. They had permeated the national universities all over the country, by the way. “Fight against the imperialism” was their motto. Whatever that was.

Many of the fanatics when asked, they hesitate and mention the Anglo-Saxon empire, the USA, etc. Never defined their borders. Never could identify that enemy. That is not surprising, given the general level of education in the barrios, where most of the people used to live.

Private schooling was very different: one of our most reputed schools is called Emil Friedman. Under this general scenario, and with that dangerous little island, an expert in exporting revolution and crime (remember Mariel? Those fellow preppers in Miami certainly should) – all of this was predicted by some people. The bad news were that those people, had not a solid enough platform because they were politicians with very questionable honesty. The exceptions were not part of the mainstream media, which found in Uncle Hugo a great asset for selling their news. But, enough with politics. I am about to puke.

What it was like to realize everything had changed

Imagine you are a Venezuelan. You don’t have a profitable job any longer, and you still have a family to support. There is no engine oil, and God forbids one of your tires should blow up. A belt for the engine costs several times your weekly salary. The parts factories have been overtaken by a mixed mafia military-LEOs-dishonest civilians, that won´t sell at the “regulated” prices (This happened in Russia, I remember reading about it in Reader´s Digest). Hyperinflation begins.

You don´t have a place to go, because the situation and daily living did not allow you to build a compound in a safe place that was large enough for being sustainable.

The situation gets worst every day. Prices in electronic, paying via bank transfer are much higher than in cash but it is impossible to get cash. People are calling to their day jobs to quit because they can´t get there, and anyway, salaries are not enough to make a decent living, not even to be able to eat a couple of days.

You are a professional with a wage or run a business that is quickly falling apart. You see on your way home families tearing up the garbage bags in the streets looking for something barely edible. Every day your kid arrives home with the news about some other school partner had to leave the country with his family.

The medical attention is almost impossible to get with a salary. Doctors, nurses, dentists and other healthcare professionals have left.

What do you do?.

You have to think outside the box to survive.

If you keep thinking inside the box and hoping for the things will improve, good luck. Chances are that is not going to happen that way. On the contrary.

Leaving out early will give you an edge over the rest of the people. If you are a prepper, there comes a point after your preps have been consumed, and there is no way to keep living, in order to survive we have to make choices. Informed, calculated, firm but somehow flexible decisions.

This is not going to be easy. You’re not (most likely) going to end gathered together around a bonfire, singing “Kumbaya”, and roasting hot dogs and marshmallows while the entire country falls apart in the cities. After the last hot dog has been eaten, and there is no way to replenish supplies, that is when the bad weather starts. Without enough resources and the proper mindset (like being ready to eat fish every day, for instance, if you have a river close enough) it is going to be three times that hard.

The Venezuelans lost the ability to hunt other thing that stray animals in the cities, or pigeons, as our wildlife was predated so heavily for years of government negligence (60 years as a minimum) that it is impossible to think in putting meat on the table with a rifle, except for some very skilled persons in very secluded areas. And oh, by the way, did I mention that the rifles for hunting and the handguns were seized to those stupid enough to take them to the military for “licensing” in 2012? They never got their guns back. They would have been useless anyway because there was no longer any ammo available.

Here is the most important part: you must try living with less. Get rid of everything you could not take with you in one or two big 3 ton.trucks, or a couple of Rvs perhaps. I’m not telling you to sell everything that you have accumulated, but…how are you going to take it if you have to move?

Our species survived by its nomadic culture. That is something that comforts me the most these days. Cultivate personal relationships with valuable, genuine, honest and straight people.

There are things I wish I had done differently.

I am in a dilemma, as I invested lots of hard-earned money trying to diversify my income before the plan of the communists sped up, and all of my equipment is now there: bechtop drills, Dremel tools for finishing, electric sanders and all kind of tools, including my CNC.

With just half of that stuff, I could have already starting a small business here. If I had followed through with my plan of having a small, reliable and dirty cheap maintenance car for daily driving and a diesel truck, we could have loaded the truck and migrated by land, perhaps with both cars and even my Berta, my beloved bike with her wonderful roaring 74 cubic inches engine. Changing the papers of the truck for personal use would have been easy, and then it would be much more practical than a car. We could have retrofitted the truck, making it livable for the road.

With my equipment, just renting an empty lot with water, sewer, and power access we could have been set up for a fresh start very different to those who are in this very same moment shaking, freezing their backsides off in the streets of the big cities in the South of America, selling cakes, chocolate and churros in the middle of the worst winter in years. We could have been together no matter what, and I would have been able to spend those 8 months seeing my kiddo growing like a weed.

That is what I have on mind, indeed.

From now forward, I will trim my life and build with my own hands whatever I could need. No matter if the results are a little bit out of the standards. I still have some tables made by my grandpa´s hands, and even a small toy boat he managed to put together for me, now part of the family museum. They will be passed on to my kids. If the world survives long enough and they can have their own families, of course.

Some additional thoughts

I have been saying that, albeit not being someone excessive religious, growing up in a Catholic country, indeed allowed me to be free enough to choose the eclectic mixture I practice now.

I pray to the Creator and ask for help and protection for my people.

I like to light some incense for my ancestors (I like my place smelling nice, too). I see the sky and try to connect with the Universal energy, wherever it can be. My spirit these days has been shaken by the news about young people from Venezuela committing suicide, in their sorrow and desperation about the future.

Please, remember those young desperate souls in our prayers, and help them to find the path to their final destination.

Thanks, and God bless us all.

About the Author
J.G. Martinez D

Jose is an upper middle class professional. He is a former worker of the oil state company with a Bachelor’s degree from one of the best national Universities. He has a small 4 members family, plus two cats and a dog. An old but in good shape SUV, a good 150 square meters house in a nice neighborhood, in a small but (formerly) prosperous city with two middle size malls. Jose is a prepper and shares his eyewitness accounts and survival stories from the collapse of his beloved Venezuela. Thanks to your help Jose has gotten his family out of Venezuela. They are currently setting up a new life in another country.

Last edited by teotwaki on Sun Jul 22, 2018 12:16 am, edited 2 times in total.

It sounds like Jose had things pretty well squared to start, but ran into trouble when things started devolving slowly at first, and then wrestling with the decision of "when to leave". Bugging in is almost universally the preferred option of most ZS-ers, but there may come a time when bugging out is the right choice. I think determining, often during an ongoing event, when is that threshold reached, is a very difficult question. I found the storyline a little hard to follow, but it sounds like Jose also made that call pretty early, which is probably greatly in his favor.

There are really very few disasters that occur which have a well-defined, expected end time. Hurricanes we get warning ahead of time, and while the extent of the damage is not entirely predictable, there's usually a good idea of when at least the storm itself will end. With your society/economy collapsing, or even a normal power outage, it is often hard to tell when things are going to get better again. Sure, there are ranges you could expect for each kind of disaster, but I think we tend to try to be optimistic about the ultimate outcome, and resistant to throwing away our best-laid plans for having to invent a new one on the fly.

It takes a lot to leave a house and life behind, taking only what you can carry, especially if the house is not yet on fire (literally and/or figuratively). Making that choice early might save you if you guess right, but it could also cost you if you guess wrong.

It is good food for thought, especially in thinking about slow-moving disasters, of how to stay ahead of the curve, and keep your plans from crumbling. And also when to realize that the curve has moved past you and you need to do some hard thinking.

Rahul Telang wrote:If you don’t have a plan in place, you will find different ways to screw it up

Colin Wilson wrote:There’s no point in kicking a dead horse. If the horse is up and ready and you give it a slap on the bum, it will take off. But if it’s dead, even if you slap it, it’s not going anywhere.

ONE. MILLION. PERCENT. That's how high inflation will climb in Venezuela by year's end, according to the latest forecast by the International Monetary Fund.

The troubled South American country, once the region's wealthiest, is caught in an economic crisis and hyper-inflationary maelstrom experienced only by a handful of states such as Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic. The comparison comes from the Fund itself.

Venezuela's economy has collapsed since crude prices nosedived nearly four years ago and authorities refused to adjust. Misguided price and foreign exchange controls have added to the distortions. Hyperinflation has taken root over the past year, sinking the population deeper into poverty. But while Venezuelans flee, President Nicolas Maduro says the crisis results from an “economic war” waged by his political opponents.

The administration has been resorting to policies that paper over the problem — the latest being a new currency that will lop off zeros from bills in circulation. The new money was scheduled to hit the streets in August but Maduro now says the release will be a bit delayed and five zeros dropped from the bolivar.

Escaping hyperinflation is challenging, with few countries managing without a monetary shock or axing their central banks. Adopting currency boards or abandoning the currency, usually in favor of the U.S. dollar, was the way out in some cases.

There's no indication Maduro and his team are considering such routes — for Venezuelans, this means daily life will continue to descend into chaos.

According to multiple media outlets, Venezuelan officials say that President Nicolás Maduro has escaped an "attack" unharmed.

Maduro was giving a live televised speech in the capital city of Caracas on Saturday when, officials say, explosive-carrying drones went off.

The Associated Press reports:

Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said was an "attack" against the leftist leader. Seven National Guard soldiers were injured, Rodriguez added.

Footage from Venezuela channel NTN24 TV shows the moment the scene descended into chaos before the broadcast was cut off. Maduro and soldiers are seen looking toward the sky in confusion, before scattering.

This is a developing story. Some things reported by the media will later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops.

Link at the website. Stand by for updates. I'm a little surprised it took this long for something to happen. Maduro is a real piece of shit, but I dunno that I support assassinations.

Venezuelan authorities have detained six people in connection with an apparent attempt to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro, according to the country's interior minister, Néstor Luis Reverol. The minister explained Sunday that they're also seeking to question at least one more person about the explosions that interrupted Maduro's televised speech to national guard troops a day earlier.

Reverol says it was a pair of commercial drone aircraft, each carrying about two pounds of C4 explosive material, that bore down on the ceremony. But the drones malfunctioned, he added — one hitting a nearby apartment building, the other crashing after getting disoriented by government jamming signals.

The blasts ended up injuring at least seven troops but left the president, seemingly their intended target, physically unscathed.

The moment marked yet another successful evasion for the embattled leader, who survived months of rampant and often deadly unrest last year to emerge with a tight grip on Venezuela's levers of power.

That grasp was evident in his landslide re-election last May in a vote boycotted by the opposition and widely condemned as fraudulent. Even as his country continues to be buffeted by spiraling hyperinflation, food shortages, eroding medical infrastructure and a massive exodus of desperate Venezuelans, Maduro has managed to crush dissent partly on the strength his alliance with Venezuela's security forces, buttressed by a projection image of untouchability.

That image was undermined in the footage of Saturday's chaos, which depicts Maduro's look of shock before the camera cuts away to a wide shot — which, in turn, shows troops breaking ranks to scramble to safety.
"I hear screams and I saw National Guardsmen with long guns on the streets, running like crazy. They even pushed an old lady who was trying to run," one activist, who had been protesting the ceremony nearby, told The New York Times. "Imagine this: Our military are supposed to protect us, and then you see them running like that."

It remains unclear who was behind the attack.

An obscure group calling itself the Movimiento Nacional Soldados de Franelas — or the "National Movement of Soldiers in T-shirts," according to Reuters' translation — appeared to claim responsibility on social media over the weekend, saying Saturday that its two drones were shot down by snipers.

"It was not successful today," the group tweeted, but it is just a matter of time."

Maduro himself has laid the blame with far-right Venezuelan groups and neighboring Colombia, a vocal critic of Maduro's authoritarian, socialist regime that has lately received many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants escaping over the border. Authorities in Bogota, for their part, have denied involvement.

Harold Trinkunas, deputy director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation, tells reporter John Otis that the incident appears more consistent with a likely plot by a rogue group such as the Soldados.

"These attacks that can be mounted by just a few individuals flying drones are the kinds of things you'd expect to see in a country where it's very hard to organize any other type of resistance movement," Trinkunas says.

No matter who was behind what happened, opposition leaders fear they know what might come next: another government crackdown, this time retaliating for the incident. A coalition of opposition groups known as Broad Front explained in a statement Sunday, translated by The Associated Press, that it does not believe Maduro's allegations.

"It's evident that the initial reaction of the government isn't aimed at attempting to clarify what happened," the coalition said, "but rather to take advantage of the situation and irresponsibly and sweepingly attack the 'opposition.' "